We had a fantastic Worker Cooperative Support Summit in August during which we talked about shared strengths and challenges in the ecosystem and brainstormed joint projects. Visit this website for news, events, and information on projects! We'll continue updating it as much as possible. Look for an email about scheduling the next network gathering this fall.

Other updates:

The 2nd Brightly Cleaning Cooperative, supported by CFL and hosted at the Carroll Gardens Association, needs new founding members. This new coop will join the Brightly brand as well as the Up & Go platform: This is cooperative replication in action! Open Houses are held at CGA (201 Columbia Street) in Brooklyn on October 4th and 13th at 6:00 PM.

Green Worker Cooperatives has six teams in their current Co-op Academy that they're looking to match up with people who can serve as mentors. They're looking for people who are experienced cooperators (at least 2 years), entrepreneurs, or business advisers and who are able to ask thought provoking questions and help people identify their blind spots. All that's required is a minimum of two meetings with a co-op between now and January and occasional reviewing and commenting on their business model canvas. The current types of co-ops in the academy include: beaded necklace makers, holistic health practitioners, a bicycle messenger/recycled bike shop, a music venue, a medicinal herb urban farm, and an artist's collective. All of them are startups. If you're interested, willing, and able, let Omar know (omar@greenworker.coop) along with some dates and times that you're available to talk.

UPCOMING EVENTS

"Hoping to overcome the city contracting system’s perennial labor conflicts, local bus drivers with TWU 100 are pressing the city to make school-bus service, long dominated by private bus corporations, more accountable to both workers and school communities through a union-led cooperative. Ideally, the pilot project would partner with the de Blasio administration’s coop development initiative to launch a labor-powered workplace. It could compete alongside the city’s numerous private vendors, but give the workers primary authority to negotiate contracts and compensation with the administration, compared to the ordinary contracting process. In the long run, the union’s vision is to gear up the industry as a whole with a more socially equitable, ecologically sustainable way of doing business."

"Last week, the Small Business Administration announced this year’s winners in its Program for Investment in Micro-entrepreneurs, or PRIME, and there’s a special emphasis on supporting training and technical assistance to strengthen cooperative forms of business, particularly those that help economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs. Of the 34 awardees, six organizations received funding to specifically target cooperative small businesses."

"Do you know who is going to care for you when you are old and frail? By current standards, it’s likely to be a middle-aged immigrant woman, with maybe a high school education and little if any training, making $20,000 a year.

And that’s if you are lucky. If you live in rural America, you may already have a hard time finding somebody to look after you. Paul Osterman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management calculates that if nothing is done to draw more workers into the field, there will be a shortage of at least 350,000 paid care providers by 2040.

"Santa Ana’s top officials are strongly endorsing businesses owned by their workers, unanimously declaring the city wants to be the first in Orange County to support small business development through worker cooperatives."

"One question for residents — and really, for all of us — is: How can we improve neighborhoods and at the same time, keep the same neighbors? Some people in Sunset Park are trying by developing worker-owned cooperatives."